For anyone familiar with last year's MLB Power Pros (the first US release in the wildly popular Japanese series of Power Pro titles), you already understand the incredible depth and complexity that lies beneath the series' overly simplistic, cutesy style and game design. For those new to the series, and for those people who might be looking at the screenshots and videos of this game and wondering how a game that looks so low tech could be so engaging, satisfying and endlessly entertaining, you are in for one helluva surprise if you decide to pick up this game (which you should immediately).

Take Me Out to the Ever-So Cute Ballgame

Power Pros 2008 presents more modes than you can shake a Louisville slugger at. While many of the modes are standard sports fair (Exhibition, Practice, Season, etc.), each one carries with it a ridiculous amount of depth thanks to the game's overabundance of choices and tweaks, which range from CPU skill levels to weather to substitution frequency to roster size to the number of extra innings to pretty much every aspect of a game that you can think of.

If you are new to the series and you want to familiarize yourself with the gameplay mechanics, you're in for a treat, because the game sports probably the most fully realized practice mode in any baseball game ever. Not only can you work on each individual aspect of the game (hitting, pitching, base running, fielding), you can also practice as a whole team on either offense or defense. Although, perhaps the best part of the entire mode is the fact that during fielding practicing, you actually have a coach standing at home plate, hitting balls to the team according to your specified angle, direction and power. It's a little touch, but it goes a long way towards creating an all-encompassing baseball experience.

Play Doll!

Season, League, and Success mode are back again, and they offer just as much (if not more) depth and mind-numbing statistical minutia as the previous installment. If creating your own team, picking out uniforms, drafting the team of your dreams, managing team finances and stepping into the role of general manager for a ten season career (Season, aka the game's franchise mode) isn't quite meta enough for you, then you will want to check out either Success mode or the game’s newest addition, MLB Life mode.

Success mode puts you in the shoes of a strapping young ballplayer whose main motivation is enacting revenge on a childhood antagonist who is far more gifted than you and who has since begun a relationship with the girl who grew up in the house next to yours and who you now realize could be your one true love... Wait. Is this a baseball game or a soap opera simulator? Surprisingly, it's a bit of both.

Unlike the previous game's storyline, which had you starting as a college player who then attempted to work his way to the pros, this time around you start your career in Double-A and go from there. Along the way, you meet players, coaches, managers, scouts and other characters with whom you are able to develop relationships. When you aren't hanging out with your friends or using your days off to practice, you are on the diamond pursuing your dreams.

In both of the game's character driven modes, the only actual gameplay comes in the form of at-bats. Your progress, and your team's success, relate directly to how you perform when you are at the plate. It is at this point (i.e. when you get on the field) that the game's insane attention to detail and statistical analysis truly comes to life, since every situation carries with it the opportunity to improve upon dozens upon dozens of abilities and attributes, most of which you won't even be aware of or fully understand until you analyze your character's skill sheet at the end of that day's game. Come through in the clutch and your player will gain clutch-hitting points. Strike out with men in scoring position and watch your whiff potential increase. As a result of the game's statistical OCD, every situation, every pitch, every at-bat takes on a heightened sense of purpose and importance. And in no other place is this fact more apparent than in the game's new MLB Life mode.

There are three modes within MLB Life. Dream Life lets you play as any current major league player and manage the day-to-day activities associated with being a sports superstar (dealing with agents, managing finances, purchasing houses and cars, and even giving interviews). Each of these activities is also available in the other modes, but they vary depending on your success or failure on the field.

The second mode is MLB Career, in which you create your own player and start out on your team's Triple-A squad and try to work your way up to the major league level. Once again, the attention to detail in MLB Life mode is just fantastic. When you aren't traveling from city to city, you will either be practicing, resting, chatting with friends, enjoying any number of hobbies or most importantly playing your heart out to earn a spot on the big league roster.

What makes MLB Life mode so engaging is that when you start out in Triple-A, you have at least three at-bats a game in which to show your stuff and gain experience points. However, once you have proven yourself and you are called up to the bigs, you will start out by making appearances as a pinch hitter, usually around the eighth inning, if at all. This means you have one shot per game to make something happen. You thought sneaking through scrub brush on the outskirts of Chernobyl in a Ghillie suit was intense? Try coming to the plate with two outs, down by one with your team on the brink of a five-game losing streak while the team's owner sits in the stands, knowing you only have one swing to keep your job. So terrifying, yet oh so sweet.

In addition to the franchise and story-based modes, you also have the option of creating custom leagues of up to six teams (League Mode) or creating a fantasy team that you can then use to pursue a championship ring (Arrange Mode).

League is worth mentioning, if for no other reason than the fact that you can choose to control any, all or none of the teams in the league and then speed-play your way through a season. But what makes the speed-play stand out is that instead of simply watching a calendar view where the scores pop up on the screen, you watch the game play out in a super simplified game mode that resembles Yahoo! Sports' StatTracker feature. A miniature field with miniature players play out the game in real time (the speed of which you can control), and instead of simple icons, the players are fully animated and move around the screen just as they would in a DS version of the game (which is coming in the Fall by the way). Again, it's something small, but it is yet another element that the developers didn’t need to put in there, but they did, and it's awesome.

There is still no online play, but the multiplayer (traditional head-to-head games or home run derbies) is satisfying enough, and given all of the available tweaks and options, every game has the potential to be unlike any other.

Pinch-Hit Me I'm Dreaming

The game's only real issue is its controls. Hitting is simple enough as you move an oval targeting reticle around the strike zone and press A to swing. You can also pull the Wiimote trigger for a power swing, which also shrinks the hitting reticle to the size of the ball. It definitely takes some time getting use to the timing and positioning required to make solid contact, but that really just makes it all the more satisfying when you hear the crack of the bat.

Pitching is also straightforward, but a bit more frustrating due in large part to the fickleness of the aiming system. The ball usually ends up going where you want it to, but many times the pitch will stay right in the middle of the plate, regardless of where you aim. Since control is the most important part of pitching, it's unlikely that the lack of it won't annoy you, regardless of the fact that the movement of the pitches and the pitching animations are both well done.

In the field, things get even more troubling. Once the ball is in play, getting your player into position can be difficult due to the game’s slippery controls. You will find yourself running circles around a stationary ball many times before you are able to quickly and effectively maneuver your fielders around the diamond. Throwing is also a problem at times since it often takes several pushes of the D-pad (each direction represents a base) before your player will actually throw the ball. This gets even more troubling when using the Wii Classic Controller as the face buttons are used for both throwing and performing actions such as jumping and diving.

For people looking for a little Wiimote swinging action, there is a Wiimote mode that contains a Home Run Derby and exhibition play. The derby plays like Wii Sports baseball, requiring you to swing the remote as the ball crosses the plate. In the exhibition mode, you hit and pitch just like Wii Sports again, the only difference being that you also shake the controller to control your fielders and your runners. It can be fun for a few innings, but after that you will either be over it or you will be too exhausted to want to finish.

Good Game, Good Game...

Baseball fans rejoice. Sports fans rejoice. Wii owners rejoice. Anyone who doesn't have a Wii, get one and rejoice. MLB Power Pros 2008 is a game you will be playing for quite some time if you decide to give it a shot. While it might look childish and basic, and the controls need some tweaking, there is more content and data tracking in this game than in any game you are ever likely to play. Clear your schedules, ditch your loved ones, and play ball.

Review by: Jake Gaskill